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<TITLE>Alpine Release Information</TITLE>

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Alpine Release Highlights
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This page is used to publish the highlights of periodic updates.  Bug fixes, explanations
for new features and so forth can typically be found here.
<P>
<H2>December 2007:</H2>

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<DT>Web Alpine General Release</DT>
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<P>
This is the first release to the general public of the Web Alpine IMAP
client.  It's built on the Alpine Mail System which itself is derived
from the Pine Mail System.  Externally, besides numerous new features,
the most significant change is likely the new licensing.  The Alpine Mail System 
has been release under the Apache 2.0 license.

<P>
Internally, there are significant changes.  The code has been
restructured to partition mail data access routines from those
functions that provide the user interface.  This allows development on
the mail engine proper to be easily reflected across the supported
interfaces.  Similarly, each interface, Unix, Windows, and Web, can be
developed reasponably independently.
<P>
Similarly, significant work has been done to make Alpine more
international. Internally, message text and so forth is represented in
Unicode, and the groundwork has been laid to support status and
command translations.

<P>
As for the Web Alpine IMAP client, it is an updated, evolutionary
improvement upon the Pine-based version that has been serving tens of
thousands of users daily on the University of Washington campus for
several years.  It is not quite as fully featured as the other Alpine
mail tools, but is a reasonably solid and complete IMAP client.  We
also tend to agree with many of its critics that it is a somewhat homely
interface, and we are taking significant steps toward addressing that
criticism. Stay tuned!

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